U.S.
Dept. of Defense photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Wade McKinnon U.S.
Navy
State of the Art: Cruisers, destroyers and frigates armed with guided missiles form the core of a modern navy's offensive power in a maritime arena like Asia

Heading
For TroubleFor
all the attention paid to the Taiwan Strait, there is little short-term
danger that shots will be fired across it in anger. But the region as a
whole is on a dangerous course. Asiaweek's Regional Security Correspondent
Anthony Davis surveys the flashpoints and the shift in Great Power relations
that will change Asia. An essay by Carlyle Thayer, a regional security specialist
based in Hawaii, says that the emerging superpower struggle could play havoc
with smaller nations who miscalculate their role in the bigger picture.
By ANTHONY DAVIS

Arms races are like inflation. They are a reality that is always with us,
but become a problem when they accelerate and threaten to run out of control.
Prudent military planning demands that a nation's capability to defend itself
is constantly modernized. But when does sensible precaution veer into rampant
militarization?

As Asia rolls into the new century in a period of renewed economic growth,
its peace and stability look far less certain than even five years ago.
China and the United States are cranking up new, more aggressive military
strategies and seeking alliances that threaten a new Cold War and could
dash the hopes for a future of trade-driven peaceful co-existence. Against
that background the region's militaries remain fragmented, with a startling
lack of cross-border cooperation.

New power players are emerging too. India, in a period of rapid economic
growth that rivals China's, is building its blue-water naval capability.
Much attention is paid to New Delhi's nuclear faceoff with Pakistan. But
more significantly, India is at the start of a 10-year naval building plan
that will allow it to project its military presence from Africa and the
Arabian Peninsula across the South China Sea. The country has enough wealth
and intellectual and industrial capacity to maintain a strong military posture
in Kashmir while turning its attention to the region at large. To that point,
Defense Minister George Fernandes has traveled around Asia striking deals
with countries as diverse as Japan, Vietnam and Malaysia to conduct joint
naval exercises. Another example of India's regional ambitions: At the meeting
of senior ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) officials in Bangkok on May 17, it
circulated a concept paper on anti-piracy issues and offered to host a workshop
for forum members in October.

"Regional cooperation" is quickly becoming a buzz word, not least because
it is in such short supply in Asia. But maybe not for long. Last year the
late Japanese PM Obuchi Keizo hosted a conference similar to India's to
propose joint patrols to combat piracy. The plan was part of a wider Japanese
strategy to place itself at the center of Asia's economic, diplomatic and
military regional institutions. The anti-piracy idea was met with a positive
response across Asia, except for China. Beijing said it would "go it alone"
when dealing with the problem. And fittingly for Japan, the plan is to have
coast guards, not navies, working together.

That approach could change. Japan stands on the verge of an era of national
soul-searching that could put an end to its post-World War II pacifist identity.
With the eventual emergence of a unified Korea and an increasingly powerful
China, sensible planning almost demands that Japan develop a robust military
capability. Few Japanese strategists think their post-war alliance with
the U.S. will last forever. As the Second World War slips into history,
the Japanese know that a genuine military defensive strategy will eventually
have to grow beyond the limited self-defense forces Japan now deploys. The
change is already underway. When Japanese vessels engaged two North Korean
ships within Japanese territorial waters in March 1999, the world was astounded
when the Japanese actually fired shots in anger -- the first since the end
of the World War II. That incident was a turning point. In the debate that
followed, the possibility of a militarily strong Japan came out of the closet.

China's size and looming presence have made it an increasingly assertive
neighbor which has pushed some smaller nations into an alliance with the
U.S. -- although in many instances it is at best a grudging relationship.
The Americans, realizing their edge, are actively encouraging closer intra-Asian
cooperative military exercises like those proposed by India and Japan. It
helps stabilize the region if countries' military commanders know each other.
Territorial spats are less likely to blow up into conflict when officers
on either side of the dispute have the home telephone numbers of their counterparts.
Admiral Dennis Blair, the U.S. Commander-in-Chief of Joint Forces in the
Pacific, has made the encouragement of formation of such ties actual policy:
"Participation in security communities clarifies shared interests and builds
confidence in the intentions among the states involved. Shared success makes
the process self-reinforcing."

Noble words indeed. But from Beijing the view is harsher: "The arms race
in Northeast Asia has never stopped. And with U.S. interference the trend
has gotten worse," says a senior mainland security analyst at the Academy
of Military Sciences who preferred to remain anonymous. "The Americans have
enhanced their power, surpassing the needs of legitimate defense, and military
alliances and heightening intervention in third countries are inappropriate."

Neither of those views throws water on the traditional "flashpoints" of
Asia -- the Taiwan Strait, the Line of Control through through Kashmir and
the Demilitarized Zone halving the Korean Peninsula. While the faceoff across
the DMZ looks like it might stand down a notch or two, the reality of a
divided Korea emerging from its half-century of national schizophrenia (see
NATIONS, page 22) is forcing its neighbors into reassessments of their own
strategic needs. The South China Sea remains a tangled mess of territorial
claims -- "No one in their wildest dreams imagines that Brunei, Malaysia
or Vietnam sees a military solution anywhere in the mix in the South China
Sea," notes Robert Karniol, regional editor of Janes' Defense Weekly. "For
China a military solution is within their range of options." Still, Beijing
and ASEAN are working toward a "Code of Conduct" for the South China Sea -- the most recent meeting in Kuala Lumpur identified "key elements toward
the process of jointly drafting" such a code.

What of Asia's smaller powers? Despite the three-year decline in defense
spending brought on by the Crisis, the region remains the world's second-largest
arms market after the Mideast. With the economic recovery defense budgets
are growing again. Military procurement has veered away from traditional
land-based weapons toward an air-sea capability that protects offshore territory.
In the 1980s Asian armies were buying armored vehicles and short-range aircraft
to control internal threats. What are they buying in 2000? In East Asia,
navies which have or plan to get submarines include Australia, China, Indonesia,
Japan, Malaysia, North Korea, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and
Vietnam. And the proliferation of ships with anti-ship missiles is even
broader. Thailand now has an aircraft carrier and is contemplating submarines.
And there is a booming competition between Americans, French and Russians
to sell slightly-below-top-shelf fighter aircraft to virtually any buyer.

The problem is that all this military capacity is flowing into a region
which doesn't have many institutions to mediate conflict. The ASEAN Regional
Forum is the only such body and has proven to be not much more effective
than any other of the ASEAN talk shops, according to Janes's Karniol. "ARF
is going nowhere. There's a problem of lack of leadership on the part of
ASEAN, along with different visions on the part of China and the West."
That is a harsher view than others have (see EDITORIALS)
but not an uncommon one. The fear is that in an era when "drugs, thugs and
bugs" pose the greatest threat to most Asian nations' prosperity, they are
starting to invest in weaponry that threatens rather than preserves stability.
With a few exceptions, Asian nations should try less to emulate the big
powers and tend more to their shorelines.